Heart may be on the left, but it is always right. Good people are not immune to bad things and heart diseases. Sure, you know how to steal hearts, win hearts, and break hearts.

A wise philosopher friend of mine once asked me who the biggest mass murderer in history was. I knew it was a trick question, one to which most people give the knee-jerk response, Adolf Hitler. The correct answer, I felt certain, was Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator who killed more than 20 million of his own countrymen.

“Wrong,” said my friend. “The greatest mass murderer in history was Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s.”

I got the message. Ruthless dictators use violence. There is no pretense of fun, no clown frolicking on television in an attempt to convince people that happiness awaits them in the gulag — colourful little shacks filled with food weapons that turn people’s bodies into medical time bombs.

Heart facts

* The average adult heart beats 72 times a minute; 100,000 times a day; 3,600,000 times a year; and 2.5 billion times during a lifetime a human heart can beat up to 3.5 billion times, according to the Texas Heart Institute

* Your body has about 5.6 liters of blood. This blood circulates through the body three times every minute. In one day, the blood travels a total of 19,000 km — that’s four times the distance across the US, coast to coast

* Though weighing only 11 ounces on average, a healthy heart pumps 2,000 gallons of blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels each day

* The volume of blood pumped by the heart can vary over a wide range, from five to 30 liters per minute

* Every day, the heart creates enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles. In a lifetime, that is equivalent to driving to the moon and back

* Because the heart has its own electrical impulse, it can continue to beat even when separated from the body, as long as it has oxygen supply

* The fetal heart rate is approximately twice as fast as an adult’s, at about 150 beats per minute. By the time a fetus is 12 weeks old, its heart pumps an amazing 60 pints of blood a day

* The heart pumps blood to almost all of the body’s 75 trillion cells. Only the corneas receive no blood supply

* During an average lifetime, the heart will pump 1.5 million barrels of blood, enough to fill 200 train tank cars

* The heart begins beating at four weeks after conception and does not stop until death

* Long sitting hours is an independent risk factor

* A newborn has about one cup of blood in circulation. An adult has about 4-5 quarts which the heart pumps to all the tissues, and to and from the lungs in about one minute while beating 75 times

* The heart pumps oxygenated blood through the aorta at about 1.6 km per hour. By the time blood reaches the capillaries, it is moving at around 43 inches per hour

* In 1929, German surgeon Werner Forssmann examined the inside of his heart by thre-ading a catheter into his arm vein and pushing it 20 inches and into his heart, inventing cardiac catheterization, now a common procedure

* On December 3, 1967, Dr Christiaan Barnard of South Africa transplanted a human heart into the body of Louis Washansky. Although the recipient lived only 18 days, it is considered the first successful heart transplant

* A woman’s heart typically beats faster than a man’s

* When the body is at rest, it takes six seconds for the blood to go from the heart to the lungs and back, eight seconds for it to go the brain and back, and 16 seconds for it to reach the toes and travel all the way back to the heart

* The pressure a human heart generates is enough to squirt blood 30 feet across a room

Heart in disease

* About 610,000 die of heart disease in the US every year

* Ischemic Heart Disease is the most common type of heart disease, killing over 370,000 people annually

* About 735,000 per year have a heart attack. For 525,000 of these, it’s a first attack; and 210,000 have already had a heart attack

* Someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds. Each minute, more than one dies from a heart-related ailment

* 70% and 89% of sudden cardiac events occur in men

(The writer is a former director of Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiology, former VC of Bangalore University and former chairman of the Karnataka State Health Commission)

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